


Don't Cry Over Spilled Milkweed

by karrenia_rune



Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice in the garden of talking flowers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Cry Over Spilled Milkweed

Disclaimer: the world below ground and the creatures and characters who inhabit are not mine; they are the original creations of Lewis Carroll and are only 'borrowed' for the purposes of the story.

 

"Don't Cry Over Spilled Milkweed" by karrenia

Alice lingered in the beautiful garden, stopping every now and again to bend over and take a whiff of the intoxicating scents of the various multi-colored flowers that lay spread out all around her like a living quilt. By now she felt that she had gotten over her initial shock of the idea of talking flowers, but she didn’t not want to become so engrossed here that she lost track of her purpose. The garden was beautiful, yes, but she still needed to keep moving if she wanted to find the end to her travels through the world underground.

Carried on an errant breeze she could only faintly detect a sound that seemed out of place among all the other sounds, the wind ruffling the leaves on the trees, tracing subtle patterns through her long blonde hair, the voices of the now quite sleepy pansies, daises, marigolds and other more exotic species of flowers and plants. At first the furtive and shuffling sound she dismissed as the movements of a small and furry animal, but when she turned so that the wind was at her back, standing perfectly still until she recognized the sound as someone crying. 

It also came from somewhere near her feet, but it was too loud and regular to be a dormouse. And she was familiar with the sound of a dormouse crying from when she had been a somewhat invited guest at the interminable tea party of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. She bent down and peered in the grass near her feet, and that was when she saw a very delicate purple pansy bud curled around a grass stalk, crying and sniffling.

“Oh, oh, dear, whatever is the matter?” asked Alice quietly.

“Is there someone there?” the tiny flower hesitantly asked.

“Yes, can I help you?”

“I don’t know if you can or not, kind stranger,” the flower replied.

“Will you tell me what’s wrong and we shall see whatever can be done,” Alice remarked, for despite her presently quite strange surroundings she was a rather practical sort of young girl.

“You see, it’s like this. I was knocked loose by the breeze and I’ve been watching the monarch butterflies that come to feed on the milkweed pods in the grass, but now I can’t find my way back to my mother and our flowerbed.” Its eyes were tiny round holes of damp lilac-hued buttons, shimmering with moisture at the corners.

“How about I pick you up, and I promise to be careful, and we’ll find your mother together,” Alice said.

“Ooh, you would do that” The flower’s voice and manner abruptly took on a more hopeful tone.

“Yes, yes,” Alice replied.

“Then let us do that,” the flower replied.

As gently as she could manage Alice cupped her hands around the tiny flower and picked him or her, or whatever it was up, and carried him from one flower bed to the next, until it indicated which one it belonged in, and she and after putting it back in place, she went on her way, the echoes and waves of the grateful and less so flowers echoing behind her.


End file.
